The Far Shores (The Central Series)

by Rawlins, Zachary

  The Yaojing glanced at him briefly before returning to her apparent contemplation of the machinery.

  “Are you addressing me?”

  “Yes. Was that overly familiar? Because I was also considering Sam, if you prefer…”

  “My name is Samnang Banh. But you may call me whatever you wish,” Samnang stated flatly. “Our association will not be lengthy enough for it to matter. The same is true for your concerns. I am not here to reassure you, merely to ensure that we receive our end of the arrangement we have made. For simplicity’s sake, however, I assure you that the Church of Sleep will abide by our agreement. The offshoot of the World Tree that you have been provided is genuine, and the sapling is already firmly rooted in the Ether. The maturation process is very nearly complete, and your technicians have used the data we provided to begin alignment. You will shortly have exactly what you wanted.”

  “Something of dubious value, if you ask me,” Michelle offered snidely. “We already have apport technicians, after all.”

  “The World Tree is capable of much more than a simple apport,” Samnang said coldly, turning her glowing eyes on the abruptly nervous Frenchwoman. “Even in its juvenile state, it will provide a persistent portal to anywhere – not a momentary transport to a single destination. It will allow for the coordinated movement of a large number of personnel or a virtually unlimited amount of material, without the necessity for an apport technician or a traceable transit through the Ether. The logistical possibilities alone will revolutionize your conflict.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.” Alistair laughed, then turned to face the small group of Anathema assembled behind him on the catwalk overlooking the machinery. The warehouse had been chosen largely by virtue of being one of the few of sufficient size that was still in moderately good repair – all of the available structures being of largely Soviet vintage – which meant that the catwalk, along with much of the interior of the building, was structurally suspect, and made occasional ominous groaning sounds under their combined weight. “Does everyone feel better?”

  “No,” Song Li responded.

  “Not at all,” Michelle agreed.

  “Yeah, not so much.” Nick Marsh shook his head, looking rather leery at the height and precarious nature of the footing, despite the nature of his protocol rendering him fundamentally immune to any potential hazard of falling. “I don’t know what she’s supposed to be – or what the hell her name is, either – but I don’t trust her one bit.”

  “An advisable, if uncharitable, conclusion, Nick,” Alistair noted approvingly. “That’s why we hedged our bets, so to speak. Do you object, Samantha?”

  “I don’t care,” Samnang said with a shrug, refusing to be distracted from the activities below. “Our interests are compatible for the near future. I do not harbor concerns.”

  “Well, I do. Thankfully, our own lovely Emily Muir has arranged a sort of insurance, if all other eventualities should fail. I trust that your part in this has been taken care of, Emily?”

  “Ready and waiting, Alistair,” Emily confirmed, will a self-important smile. “I almost hope it comes into play, because it took months to arrange.”

  “Your efforts will not be in vain, I assure you.”

  “I’ve heard rumors, you know,” Emily said, taking a step forward to stand beside Samnang and Alistair, at the edge of the catwalk. “In Central. They say that the Far Shores is working on something similar.”

  Alistair grinned broadly, but Samnang dismissed it with a shrug.

  “Is that so?”

  “Not necessarily,” Emily said confidently. “But that is what they say.”

  “Quite a coincidence,” Alistair mused, peeling old blue paint from the catwalk guard rail with his fingernail. “The scientific elite of Central and the Anathema both pursuing the same technology. Particularly since we have only made our breakthroughs with the assistance of the Church of Sleep. Makes me wonder if they have someone helping them along from the shadows as well...”

  For a moment, Samnang turned her lantern-bright and unreadable eyes on Alistair.

  “Does it?”

  “It does, Samantha. Do you have any thoughts you might want to share on the subject?”

  “Very few,” Samnang said firmly. “Though it is extremely fortunate for you that we have already arranged for a fallback, should this endeavor prove as perilous as it initially appears.”

  Emily brushed accumulated rust from her shoulders and hair with obvious distaste. The steady vibration their labors caused in the crumbling factory had been shaking loose oxidized metal and flakes of lead paint from the ceiling in a steadily increasing rain.

  “I wish this could have been done somewhere safer,” Emily said, frowning at the reddish tint on her fingers. “Cleaner, too.”

  “The Tree must be rooted in a deep flow of Ether,” Samnang explained distantly. “Such locations are rare. This was the only usable place that was firmly under Anathema control.”

  “Still, it’s risky,” Emily said. “Vulnerable, as long as the Auditors are out there.”

  “That is your concern,” Samnang said indifferently. “Not mine.”

  Alistair was briefly distracted by a rising hum, as the engineers started up the first stage of the machinery, the crystalline structure immediately responding by producing a myriad of new branching stages, suffused at the edges by a light the color of which had no name, but most closely resembled violet. The hum was shortly accompanied by a repetitive, dull pounding that beat out a steady rhythm that shook the catwalk beneath their feet, the windows of the building vibrating in resonance.

  “It appears that our people are achieving a degree of success in their labors,” Alistair observed. “Perhaps we should view it as a sign to begin our own?”

  About time, Emily Muir thought, striding past the unconcerned Yaojing to walk alongside Alistair as he descended from the catwalk. About damn time.

  ***

  Renton hovered near Anastasia, ready to support her if she stumbled or fainted. Despite shaky legs and a wobbly gait, however, she remained upright throughout a series of apports – courtesy of Svetlana – a lengthy walk through the secure area of Heathrow airport, and then boarding of a private plane destined for Berlin. Renton was anxious to know the need for the terrestrial travel, rather than apporting directly back to Central, where her security could be assured, but he kept his mouth shut, not wanting to undermine her display of stoicism.

  The plane was a sleek silver Dassault Falcon, waiting on an isolated area of the tarmac with the engines running. A polite Chinese crew welcomed them aboard, Anastasia pausing to exchange pleasantries in Cantonese with the pilot before they were escorted to their plush leather seats, done in white to match the cream color scheme of the interior. Timor waited for them there, standing behind Anastasia’s chair with tension etched across his features.

  “Ana!” Timor cried out, taking a half-step forward upon seeing her condition, before remembering himself. “Are you...”

  “Very well, thank you,” Anastasia said gently, patting his hand as she took her seat. “Not to worry.”

  “Is the crew cleared?” Renton asked Timor, one hand brushing his concealed Smith & Wesson. “Did you check the plane?”

  Timor gave him a nod while they took their seats, Timor sitting next to Anastasia, while Renton and Svetlana sat in the row opposite.

  “Everything is clean. The personnel are Black Sun relations, and I went over the plane with a fine-tooth comb – bombs, biologics, the works. We’re good.”

  Renton nodded, fighting the urge to double-check Timor’s work himself. Years of working as Anastasia’s close protection specialist practically demanded that he do such things personally, but he had ceded that responsibility to Timor when he had assumed his new role as adjutant and Committee representative. It was technically a promotion, but Renton would have traded it in a second for the seat next to Ana.

  The overhead speakers crackled, and the pilot made a brief series
of announcements and greetings while the plane rolled into immediate motion. The stewardess provided them with bottles of water, a printed English menu, and a selection of newspapers and magazines while the plane taxied. Renton was grudgingly impressed by Timor’s command of logistics – Heathrow was a difficult airport to negotiate, and an at-will takeoff was a commodity that, as far as the public was concerned, didn’t even exist. Their seats rotated forward while the jets roared to life. Svetlana subtly took Renton’s hand, careful to keep the gesture out of view of Anastasia, and leaned her head close.

  “Are you alright?” She studied him with moist eyes. “I haven’t seen you in weeks. I was worried.”

  “Of course,” Renton said, squeezing her hand and then brushing it aside. “I was working undercover, so contact was impossible. I left instructions for my absence...”

  “I was not concerned about the business,” Svetlana said quietly. “I was worried about you.”

  “No need,” Renton said cavalierly, glancing to make sure that Ana wasn’t listening. She was sitting with her eyes closed, her head resting against the soft contours of the executive chair. “There was no more risk than is usual for these sort of things. It all went well from my end. I wasn’t the one who suffered.”

  Svetlana peeked at Anastasia as the plane accelerated for takeoff.

  “Is Lady Anastasia...is she unwell? Was she taken prisoner? There were rumors...”

  “She is fine. Simple exhaustion, that’s all.” Renton lied smoothly, embedding minor telepathic suggestions in the statement that would encourage Svetlana to end the conversation. “She just needs rest. I will explain further later, when we are alone.”

  She caught the implication, giving him the sad smile that Svetlana always did when he mentioned their covert and sporadic assignations. Renton felt a brief pang of guilt, then dismissed it with annoyance, closing his eyes as the force of their takeoff pressed him back in his seat.

  The plane was insulated, the sound of the engines no more than a distant rumble. There was turbulence until they broke free of the brewing storm that surrounded London and reached their cruising altitude above the dark clouds. Anastasia appeared to be asleep, so Renton allowed himself the luxury of recrimination, blaming himself for not having moved fast enough to prevent her from suffering unnecessarily at the hands of the Thule Cartel.

  Outside of the effects of prolonged thirst and sleeplessness; lost weight and superficial burns on her temples, fingers, and tongue that were probably attachment points for electrodes; and self-inflicted bites to her fingers, Anastasia appeared relatively unharmed. Of course, she had told him nothing of her interrogation, and little of her prolonged sequester in the labyrinth beneath the Thule compound, so he could only make assumptions, and fight the urge to ask.

  On certain subjects, Renton probably knew more than her. Brennan Thule had been prone to drunken exposition, and in his guise as part of the household guard, Renton had been privy to a number of conversations between Brennan and his demented cousin, Lóa.

  Renton had followed Lóa after their meeting in the offices of the Committee-at-Large, using one of the enhancement patches that Anastasia had supplied him with to generate a form of telepathic invisibility. The ruse was successful, and Renton cornered the guard Lóa sent to collect her things from the security office before her departure. With a suppressed pistol, subsonic bullets, and a little luck, Renton had dispatched the guard without a struggle or damage to his uniform – which Renton had then employed to effect the guard’s replacement. Two minutes to memorize the dead man’s features, and Renton was able to generate a reasonable telepathic facsimile of his face. He had rejoined Lóa Thule’s entourage, banking on the fact that no one really paid much attention to individual security guards.

  It had worked, though the effort of maintaining a constant telepathic disguise for days on end had taxed Renton’s abilities to their utmost limits and beyond. Without the help of a stack of extraordinarily expensive nanite-infused patches to supplement his protocol, it would not have been possible. The first three days had been the worst, partly because Renton could not allow himself to sleep, settling instead for self-inducing the telepathic equivalent – a process that would have deleterious long-term effects. Renton tried not to think about Ana undergoing interrogation in a sealed chamber in the Thule compound’s secure wing, experiencing who knew what pain and indignity, while he methodically identified, killed, and replaced the appropriate personnel. It took three murders to achieve the position he required, each arranged to look like an accident or cast suspicion in a direction that did not imperil his mission.

  After pushing a member of the cartel guard from a balcony overlooking the main corridor in the early morning, with hardly enough time to switch the corpse’s clothes and apply a patch to create the two telepathic disguises that were needed – one for himself, and another for the dead man – in order to achieve the replacement, Renton achieved the operational necessity of a position in Brennan Thule’s personal security detail. Fortunately, Brennan Thule was accustomed to privilege to the point that he hardly noticed the staff that served and protected him. Renton took the place of another completely interchangeable servant as far as Thule was concerned. Despite a few missteps, it only took the occasional telepathic maneuver to remain entirely unsuspected. Another two days worth of telepathic manipulation and secretive violence was required before he was assigned to close protection duty, and another agonizing day of delays while Brennan Thule watched the drugged and delusional Anastasia wander the labyrinth via closed-circuit television before the head of the Thule Cartel decided that she was finally ripe for conversion.

  Once Brennan Thule had decided to make his pitch, things had gone rather smoothly. Anastasia’s act of violence at the end – whether the result of drugs, long confinement, and torment, or a calculated act on her part – was the only part of the conclusion of the affair that bothered him. Anastasia’s protocol was a matter of absolute secrecy. This, Renton knew, was in part due to its Deviant nature, as Central still had laws on the books requiring execution of any Operator afflicted with a Deviant Protocol. Anastasia was more concerned with the advantage operating an unknown protocol gave her than any potential threat to her well-being from Central, however. Renton, knowing the nature of her protocol, even to the extent that he did, regardless of his own loyalty, was a grievous threat to her existence. He would be forced to guard the knowledge carefully, going forward, to avoid being an instrument in her downfall. Any knowledge he had, after all, would automatically be targeted by her innumerable rivals.

  At some point, he must have slept, because he was stirred to wakefulness by the sound of a seatbelt releasing. He roused himself in time to see Anastasia stand and ask the stewardess a question in Cantonese.

  “Ana?” Renton kept his voice low, but left his own seat to stand beside her. “Are you alright?”

  “Yes, Renton,” Anastasia said curtly, pushing him away. “But I haven’t bathed or brushed my teeth in better than a week. Since we are in the air, I will have to make do with a sink and a change of clothes.”

  Anastasia followed the stewardess behind a curtain while Renton returned to his seat. Svetlana was occupied with a book, sitting in the halo of a reading light, but Timor was awake and alert.

  “You should have followed her,” Renton growled at Timor as he sat back down. “Even in an airplane. Even to the bathroom, if only to wait at the door.”

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Timor corrected mildly. “I was trained as a bodyguard, Renton. I tried to go with her, but she wouldn’t hear of it. You must have slept through our disagreement.”

  Renton accepted the rebuke grudgingly, and stewed over the situation.

  “I don’t like it,” he said, more to himself than to Ana’s cousin. “We should be back in Central, where it’s safe.”

  “I believe she intends to return,” Timor offered, paging through a German sports magazine with little evident interest. “I suggested the same thing
, and she told me that it was an issue of timing.”

  “Ah,” Renton said, nodding as if he knew what she was referring to. For some reason the very appearance of Timor being more in the know than him rankled Renton, professionalism aside. “That makes sense.”

  “To you, maybe,” Timor said, turning the page.

  “You aren’t curious?”

  “I am,” Timor said, glancing at Renton. “But I trust Ana.”

  Renton smiled when he wanted to grit his teeth. He turned his attention to the console inserted in the wall in front of him, an icon tracking the plane’s slow progress over the North Sea.

  “Do you know what they did to her?”

  Timor’s question surprised him. Renton shot him a look, trying to determine if Timor knew something he didn’t, but judging from his expression, he decided that the question was legitimate, rather than rhetorical. Renton suppressed the urge to delve into Timor’s mind for answers, knowing that he could not brush aside the elaborate defenses constructed around it without alerting its owner.

  “Not as much as I’d like,” Renton admitted, hoping to draw out any further information Timor might have. “I know they drugged her. Poison, really. A deliriant.”

  “Not surprising.” Timor nodded solemnly. “I talked to one of the chemists who put together that antidote she had surgically implanted. He said it was configured to purge a whole range of substances from her body. Hopefully that was one of them.”

  “Anastasia does not make mistakes,” Renton said, a little surprised to hear the words coming from his mouth, instead of being told the same. “The precognitive pool didn’t offer much, but they warned her about poison, and drugs. The precautions she took were radical, but they paid off.”

  “You’ve been with her a long time. Longer than I have. I envy your confidence.” Timor shook his head. The admission made Renton feel better than he would have admitted. It was a petty victory, but if he could, Renton would have made Timor repeat himself. “I’ve been sick with worry. The idea of Anastasia being in enemy hands, well...”